


A Mirage That Falsely Gleams

by prompt_fills



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Drabble Sequence, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Melancholy, No Dialogue, Nostalgia, Reminiscing, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7876138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prompt_fills/pseuds/prompt_fills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madrid was beautiful in summer.</p><p>10×100 words drabble about what Madrid meant to Sergio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mirage That Falsely Gleams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ourseparatedcities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourseparatedcities/gifts).



> Here, have a treat. And remember you wanted a heartache.
> 
> Title taken from a play _Life Is a Deam_ (La vida es sueño) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

*** * ***

Madrid was beautiful in summer.

Sergio thought so with all the fierce conviction of his youth when he first came to live in the city. He was foolish, desperately eager to prove himself and overjoyed to be there.

Madrid was Fernando, and it was beautiful.

It was loud like Fernando’s laugh, warm like his smile and it grew on him just as quickly.

It was a new territory to explore. Sergio stood up to the challenge. He conquered.

The carelessness and teasing admiration changed into something wild and powerful. For just a moment suspended in time, the city was theirs.

*** * ***

Sergio fell hard and fast, for both the city and for Fernando. In his mind, they were the same, one could not exist without the other.

Sergio’s favourite places were the clubs with obnoxiously loud music and dim lights. No one cared about their heated moments and the two of them did not care about anyone else.

Las Ventas found them hiding in the top shaded seats, Fernando’s soft lips brushing against his ear as he spoke his commentary of the fight bellow them.

Fernando’s laughter belonged to the busy streets, his breathy moans to the private of their apartments.

*** * ***

Fernando left for summer vacation and he did not come back.

He left the city.

Worse than that, he left the league and he left the country. He seemed to be genuinely surprised when it broke Sergio’s heart. He said he had wanted to play in England since before Sergio came to Madrid. Sergio did not know.

When Sergio next saw him, it was easy to fall into the old ways. Only, it was not like before.

The time they played together for Spain became all the more precious.

Madrid was never the same again.

The enchantment disappeared with Fernando.

*** * ***

Living in the kingdom’s capital became different.

The weather grew surprisingly cold during rainy winter days. It seemed that the city wept with Sergio for what they had lost.

The scorching summer days came again but the air did not have the right amount of dryness and sweetness to it anymore.

The streets still thrummed with life—but also with all that was gone. Around every corner loomed shadows of half-forgotten moments. When Sergio did not pay enough attention, threading close enough to these patches of darkness, the shadows would call to him.

Madrid did not want to mourn alone.

*** * ***

There was another voice. Friendly, distinctive and knowing. It kept whispering soothingly into the void Fernando left behind. Once Sergio became aware of it, it kept his focus.

It was addictive, like the city.

Iker knew Madrid differently and he was pleased to share it with Sergio.

The greying bricks, blue-white tiles, wooden chairs and soft music of Iker’s favourite café. Quiet and unobtrusive. Sergio would have never noticed it on his own.

The dusty paths in the park, the fountains cooling the air. The secretive smiles making morning practices almost bearable.

Sergio listened to what Iker had to say.

*** * ***

Built around the sinkholes, Madrid’s ephemeral beauty blossomed anew, supported by the weight of Iker’s hand on Sergio’s shoulders and the way it felt when his gloved fingers squeezed Sergio’s neck in reassurance.

The city’s pillars were lifting from the late night conversations, whispered secrets and shared dreams.

Iker’s warm breath ghosted over Sergio’s lips before gently touching, asking, pleading, quivering—Madrid thrived.

The careful mouthing of a kiss changed when Sergio gasped his encouragement.

Madrid was not Sergio’s city. It may have hold his heart captive but he could never love it.

Sergio learned to call it home anyway.

*** * ***

Fernando moved back to the city but he could never _be back_ again.

Sergio met him, once, in the park, near the fountains Iker loved.

The angle was just right and the late afternoon sun gleamed in the Manzanares river, making its water liquid gold like Fernando’s eyes.

It was toxic, like the city.

For a fleeting moment, Sergio felt an echo of the Madrid he first got to know. But it was like a mindless caress on his cheek—there and gone.

Iker’s mellow presence alone kept Madrid afloat, with all its tainted places.

Then, Iker was gone, too.

*** * ***

Sergio had been warned in advance but it did not hurt any less.

Vibrant daylight reminded him of the old Fernando and when the sun slowly disappeared from the sky and the town became oddly hushed, the shadows echoed with all that had always been _Iker_.

The heavy clouds allowed only cracks of bright, vivid colours of the sunset to shine through.

From memory to memory, one place after another, Madrid crumbled to nothing, fading away into the darkness until Sergio had nothing more to give.

The city would have to lure in new prey.

He had lingered too long.

*** * ***

Madrid without Iker was worse than Madrid without Fernando had ever been.

Fernando went and took the brightness of the city with him but at least Sergio still had the subdued shadows, the comfort of the stadium and the thrill of the game—something worth fighting for.

With Iker gone, nothing was left behind.

A distant memory of a single life, drowned by new and new voices.

Sergio was the last piece of Madrid to disappear.

It was too little, too late. A part of the city’s nature—wintry cold and slowly spreading through his veins—was leaving with him.

*** * ***

For years to come, the shadows would keep echoing their stories about Madrid with feverish urgency.

Of buoyant, reckless youth that passed too quickly while never truly appreciating the precious companion it found.

Of sober, quiet kinship that lasted longer—but not forever either—and that never scraped the deep surface like the first love did.

Sergio would always hear the mirage’s voices, no matter where he would go. They would be persistent, as loud as they were the first time he heard them, a lifetime ago.

He would never find a place where the remorseful city could not follow.


End file.
